Now is the time to look ahead—to look at the challenges facing government over the next five years and to see where the Institute can make a contribution to improving the effectiveness and performance of government. The Institute exists not just to conduct high quality research and to provide a simulating environment for discussion...
The 2015 general election is going to be very different from 2010. The unexpected events of the ‘five days in May’ leading to the formation of the first Coalition government for 65 years have provided many lessons – and pointers to problems which can be avoided next time. The existence of the coalition –...
Transformation, the post-bureaucratic state, the Big Society – whichever title you use, a big rethink is now under way about how central Government operates. However, the soul-searching that is now engulfing the Civil Service has yet to affect ministers. Back in March, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) produced a report Smaller Government: What...
Ministers and civil servants often complain about the media – their intrusiveness, sensationalism, inaccuracy and lack of proportion. At the same time, the media complain about government secrecy, distortions and manipulation. There is nothing new in this – read John Wilkes or The Times at its most thundering in the mid-19th century. Media and...
Ed Miliband is not the first party leader to talk bullishly about increasing the number of party members/supporters. All new Opposition leaders set a target of boosting party membership. They usually succeed to a limited extent in the short-to-medium term as their parties become more electorally successful. But they invariably fail in the long-term...
Government accountability for policy mistakes rests on a series of ambiguities which can too easily turn into ‘who, not me’ evasions. Among many other lessons, the Public Accounts Committee’s damning report on the £469 million (minimum) waste on the now abandoned FiReControl project exposes one of the inherent flaws in the auditing of large-scale...
E-petitions allow voters to raise issues which they believe politicians should consider. They are agenda setting, but, unlike a referendum or a plebiscite, they are not meant to decide policy. They represent a marriage of direct and representative democracy. The problem is that the terms of the marriage are unclear. What happens when a...
Most politicians’ books on policy tend to be predictable – particularly when written by ambitious young MPs with an eye on office like Tories’ Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi. Yet their account of the financial crisis, ‘Masters of Nothing: How the Crash Will Happen Again Unless We Understand Human Nature’, has many unexpected insights...
Of course, the Prime Minister has always answered questions in Parliament and until the Second World War, he was also often Leader of the Commons. But questions could be on any day when the Commons was sitting, as still happens in the far more rumbustious daily question sessions in the Australian Parliament in Canberra....
Creating a largely or wholly elected second chamber will be the most long drawn-out and bitterly fought legislation of this parliament. So there has been a widespread welcome for the creation of a Joint Committee of both Houses to consider the draft House of Lords Reform Bill. This is just the type of pre-legislative...